Do you love to marvel at flocks of birds? Have you ever wondered how bees know how to build such perfect 60 degree angles? And how do ants manage to be so damn organized, when all they have is a tiny brain, and none of them appear to be running the show.

This workshop will explore how complex patterns can emerge from networked interactions in ensembles of simple agents. We will be inspired from how bees communicate, ants navigate and neurons fire. Together, we will deconstruct, explore, tweak, and recombine a couple of dynamic systems exhibiting collective intelligence, based on code samples provided as a starting point for your own explorations.

The mechanisms learned can be used to solve optimization problems, design deeper generative systems, and think about the dynamics of social interactions from a whole new perspective. If you think your mammal brain is quite functional already, be ready to unlock your insect smarts!

Source code is up at https://github.com/MoritzStefaner/insect-smarts
Find some of the results from the participants up at: http://insect-smarts.tumblr.com